Arja Nurmi ‘A JOLLY KIND OF LETTER’ The Documents in the Case and Dorothy L. Sayers’s Correspondence on Trial This article discusses the linguistic features typical of correspondence by comparing the fictional letters in an epistolary novel, Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Documents in the Case , with the author’s genuine correspondence written before, during and after the writing of the novel. The linguistic features studied include both those arising from a reading of the studied material (forms of address, use of dialogue) and those in a list of forms identified by Biber (1988/1995) as being the most significant in distinguishing correspondence from fiction. The results show that while dialogue and reported speech are the most salient features in distinguishing fictional from real letters, on the whole Sayers seems to achieve a fairly good imitation of actual letters in her epistolary novel. Keywords correspondence; epistolary novel; linguistic variation; Dorothy L. Sayers Introduction What is a letter? How do the literary representations of letters, particularly those appearing in epistolary novels, differ from actual letters sent? In this case study I compare a particular novel (Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Documents in the Case ) and the personal letters of its writer. The main emphasis of this study is on a number of linguistic elements that, according to Biber (1988/1995), show the greatest differences between fiction and correspondence. Other features evident in reading the texts have also been taken into account where appropriate. My aim is to establish how much difference there is between letters in an epistolary novel and genuine letters, and what the main features contributing towards this difference are. The material studied In this study I compare two sets of material. The fictional letters come from the detective novel The Documents in the Case , written by Dorothy L. Sayers in European Journal of English Studies Vol. 9, No. 1 April 2005, pp. 53 – 59 ISSN 1382-5577 print/ISSN 1744-4243 online ª 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13825570500068133
5 4 E U R O P E A N J O U R N A L O F E N G L I S H S T U D I E S collaboration with Robert Eustace (1930/1981), and the real letters from an edition of the letters of Dorothy L. Sayers (Reynolds, ed., 1995). The selected letters from both sources were digitised, and the linguistic items to be studied were retrieved using the WordCruncher program. The Documents in the Case The epistolary detective story The Documents in the Case ( DITC ), first published in 1930, has the name of Robert Eustace on the title page along with Dorothy L. Sayers. There is plenty of evidence, however, that while Eustace (a pseudonym of Dr Eustace Barton) was involved in the planning of the plot, Sayers alone was responsible for writing the book (Kenney, 1990/1991: 48). As H. R. F. Keating (1993: 134) puts it, ‘she generously shared authorial credit with Robert Eustace, who gave scientific advice’. The novel has three parts. The introduction consists of one document: a cover letter introducing the purpose and method of collection of the documents following. Section One, ‘Synthesis’, has 45 numbered documents. 40 of these are letters and one is a telegram. In addition, there are two notes by the collector of the documents (the son of the murder victim), and a statement by one of the witnesses in two parts. Section Two, ‘Analysis’, has eight numbered documents: two letters (plus one unnumbered letter as part of a statement), two extracts (and one unnumbered extract) from the fictional newspaper Morning Express , three statements by witnesses and one note by the collector of the documents. In this study I concentrate on the letters in the novel, as my aim is to see how they differ from real letters. The recipients of the letters are mostly members of the immediate family: Agatha Milsom, a middle-aged spinster, writes to her sister Olive Farebrother (with one letter to a more distant recipient, Elizabeth Drake); John Munting, a poet, writes to his fiance ´e Elizabeth Drake (the one telegram is also his; there is one brief note from Drake to Munting as well); George Harrison, the murder victim, writes to his son Paul Harrison; Margaret Harrison, the wife of the victim, writes to her lover Harwood Lathom. There is also one letter each from Lathom to his friend Munting, from Sir James Lubbock (a Home Office pathologist) to Paul Harrison, and from Munting to Paul Harrison. The size of the selected sample is 35,294 words. The letters of Dorothy L. Sayers When comparing the novel with actual letters, I have chosen to compare it with letters written by Dorothy L. Sayers herself ( DLS ), in order to eliminate as many extraneous variables as possible. Sayers’s letters come from the first volume of the recent edition of her correspondence (Reynolds, ed., 1995). From the hundreds of extant letters, the editor has had to choose only a small portion, which to some extent seems to favour Sayers’s professional contacts. However, there is a sufficient selection of letters to family members for the purposes of this study. I have chosen a sample of Sayers’s letters written between 1928 and 1935: that is, before, during and after the writing of The Documents in the Case (Reynolds, 1993: 221). There are twenty letters to Sayers’s ‘partner in crime’, Eustace Barton, as well as a number of letters to other recipients. Because most of the letters in the novel are addressed to members of the immediate family (sister, son, fiance ´e, lover), I have, in
DOROTHY L. SAYERS’S CORRESPONDENCE ON TRIAL 5 5 addition to the letters to Barton, chosen letters addressed to Sayers’s parents, son, cousin (Ivy Shrimpton) and a close friend (Muriel St Clare Byrne). The size of the selected sample is 26,007 words, and altogether 64 letters have been included. The linguistic features studied I will look at various linguistic features appearing in the letters, including forms of address, the use of personal pronouns, tense, dialogue and other elements. The linguistic features studied by Biber provide a good point of comparison, although applying all of them to these two shortish corpora did not prove practical. The linguistic features selected for this study from Biber were chosen as being the ones that showed the most marked differences between fiction and personal letters. Some features, such as infinitives and that- deletion, were left out because retrieving them from a grammatically unannotated corpus would have been too time- consuming. Presentation of letters Both the novel and the book of real letters follow the traditional format of an edited collection of letters. The documents in the novel are numbered, as is customary in an edition, while the letters in the edition are not. In both cases, the letters are preceded by what could be called editorial headings: information on who wrote the letter to whom – again, a customary feature of letter collections. The documents in the novel are nearly always complete, the only two exceptions being letters Twenty-seven (where the opening pages of the letter are said to be missing), Sixteen (where the rest of the letter is irrelevant to the main point) and Thirty-one (where the intimate nature of the rest of the letter has led to its exclusion). In Reynolds’s edition of Sayers’s letters, numerous passages have been omitted. These omissions are characterised by the editor as being uninteresting (Reynolds, ed., 1995: xvii – xix). Sayers’s own letters include occasional drawings, which have (at least to some extent) been reproduced in the edition. The novel does not contain any such drawings. Forms of address Both the novel and the edition of real letters present address formulae at the beginning and end of each letter. In the fictitious letters, the address forms and signatures include nicknames between lovers (Bungie, Petra, Lolo); however, Sayers never uses nicknames in her real letters, however close the recipient may be to her. Use of dialogue In the novel, dialogue takes place in the so-called statements that have been left outside this study. There is also a great deal of dialogue and reported speech in the letters of the novel – for example:
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